Another week, another Friday. Did you celebrate Canada day this past Wednesday like I did, patriotically eating poutine while the national anthem plays? (Not kidding.) Will you be celebrating the Fourth of July on Saturday like I will, glaring resentfully outside at the sweltering sun and warring with your desire for fireworks and hotdogs versus air conditioning? (Also not kidding.) Whatever the case, friend, and even if you're celebrating nothing at all, let's celebrate this Friday with some free games! This week... a creepy interactive animation about judging the wrong sorts of people, an incremental game of robots and more that may make your finger fall off, a turn-based game where shoving is the solution, and a single-screen adventure where a fish is out to save his little world.
- Blue Reef Ember - SigilCipher's action game about an intrepid little fish trying to save his home reef from invading jellyfish takes place on a single screen, opening up as you explore. You can shoot bubbles at enemies, use the glowing portals to activate checkpoints, and you'll even find a friend or two to help you out. Can I just point out that Ember's friends are a lot better than mine? Because when I asked my best friend to lend me her secreted toxin, she just looked at me like I was the crazy one.
- Shoving - Simple in concept and even more simply named, Aaron Steed's puzzle game is all about getting rid of enemies that are weak against a single hard shove against a solid surface. The trick is, each enemies moves in different ways, and with no directions, it's up to you to figure out how to get rid of them... it's turn-based, so take your time! I am also weak against shoves, by the way. They won't destroy me... they'll just hurt my feelings.
- Milk For the Ugly - Alright, so it's not actually a game, but if you want something supremely creepy as well as morbidly funny, then this interactive comic from Kate Redesiuk, Anna Podedworna, and other very talented people is well worth a flip through. A disheveled old woman sweeps trash, muttering to herself, in an alleyway, while everyone avoids her. Is she crazy? What's really going on in her apartment? Fantastic artwork and great atmosphere will keep you guessing, and maybe make you think twice about judging other people.
- Clicker Adventurers - Hyuga House's entry into the idle incremental games genre really wants to make you ruin your mouse. In the beginning, all you can do is manually click to attack enemies yourself, but as you unlock and upgrade other heroes, they'll fight autonomously for you, though unlike some other clicker games, the enemies are also attacking and dealing damage to your hero. Work your way through cowboys, robots, and more, and... that's about it, really!
I think Shoving messed with my computer's audio. I played it for a few levels, then all the sound on my entire computer completely shut off until I closed the window. It didn't register as muted anywhere, it just wasn't playing sounds. I went to the volume mixer and it showed an uncharacteristically steady full sound coming from Firefox.
Wow. Milk for the Ugly was a GREAT work of interactive fiction! Sort of reminds me of a cool Twilight Zone episode or something like that. So interesting.
I wonder why the apple though...
What exactly are incremental games?
Milk for the Ugly looks really cool (and I like the music), but it crashed Flash twice in the same place (around panel 11?), so I'm not sure how to continue.
And it's not "interactive". It's just a graphic novel in Flash form.
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